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CHAPTER 9 GROWING YOUR BUSINESS EMPIRE

Business functions would have been formalized and structures
and systems would be in place. To maintain growth, your
company would be aggressively expanding its operations
regionally and internationally.

Challenges:
As you are now one of the dominant players in your industry,
competition will become even more intense, especially with
other market leaders. In order to fight off threats from your
competitors, you will have to keep innovating and strengthening
your competitive advantage. A lot of time and money will also
go into advertising in order to strengthen your brand image
and recall among consumers.

As company gets bigger (usually more than 200 people and
$50 million in revenue), you may find yourself (and your
pioneer management team) lacking the skills sets to effectively
manage such a large organization with multiple product lines
in multiple markets. This is especially so if you lack an MBA
education or have little corporate experience in senior
management with an MNC. At this stage, many entrepreneurs
either upgrade themselves (by taking an MBA) and/or start
hiring professional managers/directors with years of corporate
experience of running MNCs to move the company forward.

Another key challenge is the lack of management talent
required to manage your overseas operations. Therefore,
another thing that you have to focus on is recruiting and
grooming new management talent.

Management and Leadership Style:
At this stage, many of your directors and managers would
have the knowledge, skills and experience to run the company
effectively. You will be able to trust them to take care of the

276 SECRETS OF BUILDING MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR BUSINESSES